> Must be age 30 or under
I wonder what legal exception allows this to be a requirement. This would never fly on a tech job posting.
I wonder what legal exception allows this to be a requirement. This would never fly on a tech job posting.
For the audience at home: Marines 28, Army 35, Air/Space forces 39, Navy 41, Coast Guard 42.
ref:https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-age-limits/
[1] https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2022/11/07/facing-d...
Do other countries with substantial densities of planes in the air have the same age prerequisite, and in the ones that don't are their planes colliding any worse than in the States?
Seems rather obvious. You'll be trained on the job for some time, and then be expected to have a career at ATC for a decade or so at least. They don't want 40+ or 50+ year olds with slower responses and the gradual appearance of physical and medical issues starting to work there...
It's not like it's a job about thinking in an office without major consequences of a responce delayed 30 seconds...
We have to hold a medical certificate that is close to a Class 2. There are lots of medical conditions that if we are diagnosed with, or drugs that if we report taking, we cannot be controllers.
We are forced to retire when we turn 56. The 31 age cutoff is to accommodate that. We can retire at any age with 25 years of ATC service. By law we also cannot work more than six consecutive days, and no more than 10 hours a day. There are some facilities that schedule everyone for that maximum.
There is no stigma with calling in sick unless there's a pattern, even if it's just because something is bothering you and you don't think you'll be able to focus that day. However just like every other federal employee, we only accrue 1 sick day a month.
On r/ATC2, there is some saying we should get more sick leave than that, which I won't disagree with, but it wouldn't be sick leave, it would have to be called something else. I believe the nature of our job necessitates that we get more "sick" leave. I know other federal jobs can acrue other types of leave.
By making the maximum starting age cutoff 30, all new hire controllers have the potential to do their 25 years and earn a pension prior to reaching retirement age.
Pro Tip: The one publicly stated exception to the 30-year starting age cut off is for former military air traffic controllers. These candidates may apply even if they are older than 30."
This makes me wonder: what portion of America's ATCs are former military ATCs? I'm guessing it's fairly substantial, and without this convenient source of recruits (because someone who spent time in the military doing ATC now has a very convenient pipeline into a civilian job), the FAA might be forced into making changes.
It's similar for pilots: a lot of them are former military pilots, so they got all their training at government expense, and the industries that hire them don't have to pay for that. Pilots without a military (or police) background generally have to pay for their own training, which is extremely expensive, so not that many people do it, because these jobs don't pay that well to begin with. Without the military giving free training to all these people, a lot of industries in America wouldn't have such a cheap source of readily-trained labor and things would look very different.